Hello everyone! This is something I have wanted to bring up for awhile, and I do not post this with any ill intent, but from a positive attitude of wanting us all to grow as community roleplayers that we can feed off of. It is just to toss idea around, promote constructive criticism and ideas that we can all benefit from in roleplay.

More often then not, our characters are seeing crazy shit. Especially in Dead End, where, in my experience on the grid, has some of the darkest undertones of any Sim I've played in, in SL.
We have chaos, destruction, heartbreak, scandal, corruption... all of these great emotions and so many things to play off of. More often than not, people don't do this.

The question I pose to you, is why?
Why are we not allowing our characters to think like a human?

There are different scenarios here. Whether an innocent, a denizen, a lurker... every character has some type of past, present, mindset and personality that enables them to think like a human to some varying degree. So why do we push past these details?

Your character witnesses a stabbing, an argument, goes through heartbreak, goes to jail... so many times I have seen scenarios like this where the character laughs it off, or really just brushes over it with no detail. I just hate to think how much story you are potentially missing out by not letting yourself arch off of that emotion.
Let your character be impacted - yes, even negatively. This can be where the most growth comes from at any given time.
If you have an idea for a storyline and it doesn't go in the direction you want, sometimes this can be frustrating. But what I am saying is look at the bigger picture.. you can take one emotion that your character, as a human would feel, and transform that in to a whole new story line alone.

People get so caught up in the mundane of just hanging out at the bar an RPing drinking. There's nothing wrong with this, and if that is the type of RP you enjoy then more power to you! What I am saying is that when something happens around you, react to it... pause, read the post, acknowledge it... think like a human, and consider how a real person would react if they were seeing some of the crazy horrors we witness in DE. No matter how de-sensitized your character may be, they are still a human and will have some type of reaction, instead of brushing everything off.

Just something to consider, after some recent attempts to stir plot I have done have been left unnoticed and unacknowledged by other characters, it had me wondering when the citizens of DE have went so numb and void of emotion. Emotion drives RP. I challenge you all to consider playing in to it, have a discussion and share your feedback here, about realism, and what thinking like a human IC can do for our writing.